Interpol says it has no choice but to accept resignation of president arrested in China

"There’s no reason for me to suspect that anything was forced or wrong," said the agency's secretary general

The global policing agency Interpol has said that its hands are completely tied in regards to the resignation of its president after he was arrested in China for alleged corruption.

“We have to accept, like we would accept with any other country, that this country [China] is taking sovereign decisions and if that country tells us ‘We have investigations, they are ongoing, and the president has been resigning, he’s not a delegate of the country anymore,’ then we have to accept,” Interpol’s secretary general Juergen Stock said yesterday at news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Lyon, France.

Back in early October, the wife of 64-year-old Meng Hongwei reported her husband missing to French police. Meng was elected president of Interpol in 2016. He also served as vice minister of public security in China, making regular trips back and forth from Lyon to his home country.

Meng’s wife explained that she had not heard from her husband since he arrived in China the week before. At a press conference, she said that the last text message she had received from him was the image of a knife.

After a few days, China announced that Meng was under the “monitoring and investigation” of anti-corruption party investigators for allegedly accepting bribes and Interpol released a short statement saying that it had received Meng’s resignation.

“There’s no reason for me to suspect that anything was forced or wrong,” Stock said about Meng’s resignation, adding that the bribery charges were not linked to Meng’s work at Interpol and that the agency had been “strongly encouraging” China to share information about his case.

Interpol will elect Meng’s successor at a general assembly in Dubai later this month. Something tells us that the new president will not also be a Chinese official this time around.